e silver necklet sold. Offerings are made to the saints and
a feast is given to the friends of the family. The dead are buried,
camphor and attar of roses being applied to the corpse. On the _Tija_
and _Chalisa_, or third and fortieth days after a death, a feast is
given to the caste-fellows, but no mourning is observed, neither
do the mourners bathe nor perform ceremonies of purification. On
the _Tija_ the Koran is also read and fried grain is distributed to
children. For the death of a child the ordinary feasts need not be
given, but prayers are offered for their souls with those of the other
dead once a year on the night of Shab-i-Barat or the fifteenth day
of the month Shaban, [45] which is observed as a vigil with prayer,
feasts and illuminations and offerings to the ancestors. Kunjra men
are usually clean-shaven with the exception of the beard, which is
allowed to grow long below the chin. Their women are not tattooed. In
the cities, Mr. Crooke remarks, [46] their women have an equivocal
reputation, as the better-looking girls who sit in the shops are said
to use considerable freedom of manners to attract customers. They are
also very quarrelsome and abusive when bargaining for the sale of their
wares or arguing with each other. This is so much the case that men
who become very abusive are said to be behaving like Kunjras; while
in Dacca Sir H. Risley states [47] that the word Kunjra has become a
term of abuse, so that the caste are ashamed to be known by it, and
call themselves Mewa-farosh, Sabzi-farosh or Bepari. When two women
are having an altercation, their husbands and other male relatives
are forbidden to interfere on pain of social degradation. The women
never sit on the ground, but on small wooden stools or _pirhis_. The
Kunjras belong chiefly to the north of the Province, and in the
south their place is taken by the Marars and Malis who carry their
own produce for sale to the markets. The Kunjras sell sugarcane,
potatoes, onions and all kinds of vegetables, and others deal in the
dried fruits imported by Kabuli merchants.
Kuramwar
_Kuramwar_. [48]--The shepherd caste of southern India, who are
identical with the Tamil Kurumba and the Telugu Kuruba. The caste is an
important one in Madras, but in the Central Provinces is confined to
the Chanda District where it numbered some 4000 persons in 1911. The
Kuramwars are considered to be the modern representatives of the
ancient Pallava tribe whose kings w
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